PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies

Friday, April 24, 2009

Julian Baker was educated at Edinburgh and Birmingham Universities, and wrote his thesis on the coinages of medieval Greece. He held post-doctoral fellowships in Rome and Princeton. He has been working for the Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, since 2004, as ‘Finds Adviser for Medieval Coins’ and latterly as ‘Gallery Curator’, where he was responsible for the museum’s new Money Gallery which is to be inaugurated in November 2009. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Keeper for Medieval and Modern Coins. Julian Baker teaches western and Byzantine numismatics at Oxford University, and publishes on Greek, Italian and English coinages of the middle ages. His monetary history of medieval Greece is forthcoming with Brill in Leiden.

Robert Kool, is Senior Curator at the Coin Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority, specializing in medieval and Crusader coinages. The Department holds some 200,000 coins and hoards from excavations and constitutes one the largest scientific numismatic databases of its kind in the world. He has published extensively on the subject of Crusader coinage mainly from unpublished Crusader sites. He is currently concluding his PhD on coin circulation and monetary developments in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests also include the monetary history of the Fatimids (10-11th c.) and the Mamluks (14-15th c.) in light of unpublished single finds and hoards found in recent excavations.

Pagona Papadopoulou is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University. She holds a Ph.D. from the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne with a thesis on money and its use in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Balkans, Asia Minor and Cyprus. She has been a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.) and a post-doctoral fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (Koç University, Istanbul). She has also worked as a coin specialist in excavations in Albania (Butrint) and Ukraine (Chersonesus) and as an associate in the Numismatic Collection of the National Museum in Belgrade (Serbia). Her research interests and publications focus on Byzantine, Latin and Islamic Medieval coinages, as well as on lead seals. Her dissertation is forthcoming in the Monographies du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance (Paris, 2010).

Scott Redford is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art and Director of the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul. He is author or co-author of 3 books and many articles on the archaeology, art history, and history of medieval Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean. He is currently writing two books: the final report of excavations in Templar-Cilician Armenian levels at the site of Kinet, Turkey, and a study of Anatolian Seljuk urbanism.

James J. Todesca received his M.A. in history from the Catholic University of America in 1985 and completed the Ph.D. in history at Fordham University in 1996.  He was a Fulbright Scholar in Spain from 1989 to 1991 where he conducted the research for his dissertation "What Touches All: Coinage and Monetary Policy in León-Castile to 1230."  He is the author of several articles focusing on the development of a monetary economy and royal fiscal policy in the medieval kingdom of Leon-Castile.  His "The Monetary History of Castile-León (c.1100-1300) in Light of the Bourgey Hoard"(1988) was awarded the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academy of America.  Since 1998 Todesca has taught at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia where he holds the rank of associate professor in the History Department.  In 2003 he received the Brockmeier Faculty Award for outstanding teaching and service to the university.

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Last updated 4/20/09